Spanish Florida

Spanish Florida was a Spanish colony that existed in the southern United States from 1513 to 1821. The colony was established when the explorer Juan Ponce de Leon claimed the peninsula for Spain in 1513, and the presidio of St. Augustine was established in 1565 as a Spanish stronghold. Missions were established in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina during the 1600s, but the Spanish were driven out of South Carolina by England and Native Americans as late as 1655, and the British established the garrison colony of Georgia in 1732 to keep the Spanish inside of Florida.

Much of the peninsula was uninhabited due to conflict and disease in the early 1700s, allowing for Native American refugees (especially the Creek tribe) and escaped African-American slaves to begin settling the area in the mid-1750s, pushed out of their homes by English raids and settlements. These people coalesced into the Seminole culture, and they resisted Spanish rule; the mission system in Florida failed due to the depopulation of the Native Americans in the region. At the conclusion of the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1748, Great Britain and Spain agreed on the northern boundary of the state, and the British occupied the region from 1763 to 1783 after the French and Indian War. In 1803, as a part of the Louisiana Purchase, the United States laid claim to West Florida, but Spain considered the region to be a part of Florida. In 1810, the Baton Rouge-based Republic of West Florida declared its independence from Spain, and the US Army moved into West Florida and annexed the republic. In 1812, the USA annexed Mobile into the Mississippi Territory, reducing Spanish Florida to modern Florida. In 1814, General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida with an army of US troops to drive out the Seminole and British forces raiding the southern United States from Florida, deposing Governor Mateo Gonzalez Manrique; the Spanish protested the invasion, but they were unable to defend Florida, and they sought a diplomatic solution. From 1816 to 1817, the Americans invaded again during the First Seminole War, and Spain decided to sell Florida for a lump sum of money rather than lose it to an invasion. In 1819, Spain signed the Adams-Onis Treaty, which led to Florida being sold to the USA in 1821.